in other news..."fortress of solitude"

i'm reading "fortress of solitude" by jonathan lethem...about a white kid growing up in black brooklyn in the 70's...really good...also not too much with the plot...but really good...background politics and race relations and pop culture are very cool too...
my favourite part so far...page 109...[and for michelle - the best friend is biracial...]
"It was entirely possible that one song could destroy your life. Yes, musical doom could fall on a lone human form and crush it like a bug. The song, that song, was sent from somewhere else to find you, to pick the scab of your whole existence. The song was you personal shitty fate, manisfest as a throb fo pop floating out of radios everywhere.
At the very least the song was the soundtrack to your destruction, the theme. Your days reduced to a montage cut to its cowbell beat, inexorable doubled bass line and raunch vocal, a sort of chanted sneer, surrounded by groans of pleasure. The stutter and blurt of what -- a tuba? french horn? Rhythm guitar and trumpet, pitched to mockery. The singer might as well have held a gun to your head. How could it have been allowed to happen, how could it have been allowed on the radio? That song ought to be illegal. It wasn't racist -- you'll never sort that one out, don't even start -- so much as anti-you.
Yes they were dancing, and singing, and movin' to the groovin, and just when it hit me, somebody turned around and shouted -
Every time your sneakers hit the street, teh end of that summer, somebody was hurling it at your head, that song...
...September 7, 1976, the week Dylan Ebdus began seventh grade in the main building on Court Street and Butler, Wild Cherry's "Play That Funky Music" was the top song on the rhythm and blues charts. Fourteen days later it topped Billboard's pop charts. Your misery's anthem, number one song in the nation.
Sing it through gritted teeth: WHITE BOY!
Lay down the boogie and play that funky music 'til you die."

from "the fortress of solitude" by jonathan lethem.



...i read about this book while reading "polysyllabic spree" by nick hornby...